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Camp De Thiaroye Ou La Déconstruction Du Mythe Colonial Par Le Truchement De La Langue Française Maurice Tetne Mr

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Camp De Thiaroye Ou La Déconstruction Du Mythe Colonial Par Le Truchement De La Langue Française Maurice Tetne Mr University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations Summer 7-1-2019 Camp de Thiaroye ou la déconstruction du mythe colonial par le truchement de la langue française Maurice Tetne Mr. University of New Mexico - Main Campus Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/fll_etds Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, French and Francophone Language and Literature Commons, and the German Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Tetne, Maurice Mr.. "Camp de Thiaroye ou la déconstruction du mythe colonial par le truchement de la langue française." (2019). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/fll_etds/135 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Maurice Tetne Candidate Foreign Languages and Literatures Department This thesis is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Thesis Committee: Pim Higginson, Chairperson Stephen Bishop Walter Putnam i CAMP DE THIAROYE OU LA DÉCONSTRUCTION DU MYTHE COLONIAL PAR LE TRUCHEMENT DE LA LANGUE FRANÇAISE BY MAURICE TETNE PREVIOUS DEGREES B.A., AFRICAN LITERATURE AND CIVILIZATIONS M.A., AFRICAN LITERATURE AND CIVILIZATIONS THESIS Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts FRENCH The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico July, 2019 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank my committee members, Professor Pim Higginson, Professor Stephen Bishop, and Professor Walter Putnam, for their valuable recommendations pertaining to this study and assistance in my professional development. I extend my gratitude to Dr. Marina Peters-Newell and Professor Pamela Cheek for their constant support, training and guidance. To Elvine Bologa, Eva Sanchez and Evelyn Harris, staff members of the Department for their dedication and support. iii CAMP DE THIAROYE OU LA DÉCONSTRUCTION DU MYTHE COLONIAL PAR LE TRUCHEMENT DE LA LANGUE FRANÇAISE by Maurice Tetne B.A., African Literature and Civilizations, University of Douala, 2012 M.A., African Literature and Civilizations, University of Yaoundé 1, 2014 M.A., French, University of New Mexico, 2019 ABSTRACT The history between France and Africa has been peppered with numerous irregularities and crimes. Senegalese filmmaker Sembene Ousmane’s film Camp de Thiaroye (1988) returned to this painful story of the Thiaroye tragedy. That film chronicles the criminal massacre by the French of returning Senegalese soldiers. The latter, having sacrificed themselves for France during WWII, demanded treatment and compensation equal to their French counterparts. Interestingly, one of the significant details of this film is the multitude of languages and “patois” that the various African soldiers speak. At the same time, the lingua- franca, a kind of “pidgin” called Français-tirailleur, is simultaneously a demeaning “baby-talk” used by the French to speak to the African soldiers and serves, once co-opted by the infantrymen, as a weapon of resistance. Indeed, it is my argument that with the complex politics of language in the film, Sembene turns French against itself, thereby signaling the crimes of the colonial power and their lingering legacy. Complicating matters, Francophone African literature and films are not only noteworthy for their use of various vernacular and/or local versions of French but as the meeting place of various local “African” languages that also interact in complex ways with the language of colonialism, modifying it and absorbing it equally. This is one of those aspects that Sembène significantly highlights in Camp de Thiaroye where language becomes an instrument of anti-colonial struggle. By their alleged misuse of the French language, African soldiers manifest their rejection of this language which is for them a symbol of oppression. Keywords: Language, Colonization, Deconstruction, Fluctuation, Myth, Power. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………...1 CHAPTER 1 DÉPLOIEMENT DE L’ARMATURE LINGUISTIQUE……………………...14 CHAPTER 2 ENTRE TENSION ET DEMYSTIFICATION………………………………33 CHAPTER 3 MOSAÏQUE DE LANGUES ET COHABITATION LINGUISTIQUE…………..50 CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………………..64 REFERENCES …………………………………………………………………..66 v 1 Introduction En 1988, Sembène Ousmane retrace la tragédie largement oubliée par l’histoire de Thiaroye au Sénégal. En Novembre 1944, des soldats Africains débarquent à peine de France et sont installés dans un camp de transit où ils sont sensés percevoir leur solde de guerre avant de regagner leurs domiciles respectifs. Doucement mais progressivement, un climat de tension va s’installer dans le camp et les revendications des soldats africains vont se résoudre par un carnage. Au-delà du film et de l’image, Sembène Ousmane dans ce long-métrage se sert d’un certain nombre d’outils pour, à sa manière, décontenancer le mythe colonial. La France présente en Afrique depuis des décennies a entretenu dans l’esprit collectif l’illusion d’une toute- puissance à travers son implantation et son expansion sur le continent. Devenue la « mère patrie », elle entretiendra son hégémonie par la violence. Sembène ébranle toutes ces conceptions à leur base. La langue française devient alors l’outil de référence dont il va user tout au long du film. En même temps que le scénario s’étend sur la discorde de Thiaroye, le cinéaste met en phase le comique et le tragique pour engager la question de la langue. Le personnage-acteur du Caporal-chef Diarra est essentiel dans ce rôle, car il incarne non seulement un "rejet" de la langue française, s’exprimant dans une langue saccadée dénuée de style et de forme, mais paradoxalement, il s’exprime parfaitement en Allemand. Sembène semble vouloir démystifier le Français comme langue (et avec lui toute l’architecture coloniale qu’il incarne ou représente) et lui proposer une antithèse qui puisera à la fois dans la langue de 2 l’ennemi allemand et dans la mosaïque des langues africaines dont chacun des soldats africains se fait l’ambassadeur. Le présent travail explore l’usage de la langue française, qui s’affirme dans ce long-métrage comme un instrument de lutte anticoloniale. La manière dont la langue française apparaît dans le film démystifie et déconstruit l’imaginaire colonial au fur et à mesure que les scènes s’enchaînent et que la tension monte. Sembène semble se servir d’un instrument un peu inattendu pour contester l’ordre social régnant. Le mérite de cette démarche est que l’ironie, l’humour et l’autodérision dont le film est chargé pourraient bien faire passer inaperçu la solide revendication qui se cache derrière. Ce travail plonge donc au cœur du Français dit tirailleur pour découvrir comment il devient un outil de déconstruction du mythe colonial et comment d’autres langues en usage dans le film contribuent à construire une échelle de valeur où les hommes peuvent traiter d’égal à égal. Camp de Thiaroye a fait date et de nombreux critiques de cinéma et critiques littéraires s’y sont intéressés. Kenneth W. Harrow (l’un des critiques de cinéma africain les plus importants des dernières décennies) oppose une vive critique à Sembène. Son travail consiste en majorité à interroger les faces cachées dans les chars qui enflamment le camp à la fin du film. Pour lui, il n’y a aucun doute que c’est une volonté chez Sembène de garder le mystère sur l’identité des pilotes des chars. Il aurait ainsi voulu aggraver le cliché colonial qu’il ne cesse de dépeindre tout au long du film en présentant les noirs oppressés et les blancs oppresseurs : The fact that soldiers in the tanks were themselves Senegalese tirailleurs is not an insignificant detail, nor is Sembène’s decision not to identify them. To have shown them as Africans would have muddied the water of the film in which the opposition is set up between an oppressive French officer corps, and a nascent unified African body of ordinary soldiers. (147) 3 Il ne fait aucun doute que l’oppression française a été favorisée par certains africains qui, eux-mêmes, intégrant l’illusion de la prétendue supériorité blanche, se faisaient appeler évolués par rapport à leurs frères africains qui selon eux ne l’étaient pas. Les Français ont dès lors trouvé en eux terrain fertile pour l’annexion de leurs compatriotes. Rien de surprenant que qu’il y ai des africains aux commandes des chars qui ont rasé le camp, mais Sabrina Parent cependant adresse un droit de réponse à Kenneth Harrow, argumentant que Sembène, dans sa progression narrative, s’est suffisamment investi dans d’intenses recherches pour documenter son film. Une lecture comparative du film avec Tragedy at Thiaroye d’Echenberg démontre selon elle que le cinéaste sénégalais s’est suffisamment instruit sur le sujet. De plus, elle lui oppose l’argument selon lequel le travail de l’historien ne saurait être confondu à celui de l’artiste. Pendant que les historiens se préoccupent de descriptions scientifiques qui reflètent au mieux la réalité du passé, les artistes, forts de leur casquette de créateurs, sont dégagés de certaines de ces contraintes. Elle conclue à ce stade: It would be irrelevant to reproach their [the artists] modifying of reality and call it falsification. When their objective is clearly to adhere, for the most part, to narratives provided by historians (who, by the way may themselves be mistaken, since historiography is a work in constant progress), they obviously manifest a desire to provide an access to history that historiography or historical textbooks do not allow. (103) De plus, elle relève que jamais Sembène n’a eu l’intention d’occulter le fait que certains africains se sont constitués en bourreaux pour leurs frères : « Obviously, Sembene did not intend to hide the troubling fact that Africans shot and killed their African brothers: it suffices to "read" the movie more accurately » (105).
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